The present disclosure relates to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method, and an image processing system and, more particularly, to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method, and an image processing system that provide a multi-picture reproduction system according to an encoding standard in which a processing load and image quality deterioration are small.
As contents become digitized and an infrastructure to transmit pictures is configured, distribution of pictures through the Internet is becoming increasingly common. In recent years, with personal computers, television receivers that can be connected to a network are used as receiving-side devices. Therefore, distributed picture contents can be viewed using the television receiver. In recent years, various channels including private contents can be provided to viewers through the network by the development of a cloud service. For this reason, the need for a multi-picture reproduction system shown in FIG. 1 in which a plurality of picture contents can be viewed at the same time and desired picture contents can be simply searched has become high.
In the multi-picture reproduction system of FIG. 1, a multi-picture reproduction image that is displayed on a screen is configured using a plurality of picture contents. A main picture content that is a picture content to be viewed mainly among the plurality of picture contents to be displayed is arranged with a maximum size at the center of the screen. The other picture contents that can be selected (switched) are arranged around the main picture content with sizes smaller than the size of the main picture content. The picture contents that can be selected are a TV broadcasting channel, a Web screen, a video content such as a movie, and a TV chatting screen and are acquired from a cloud (network).
As a first method of realizing the display of the multi-picture reproduction image, there is a method of receiving a plurality of encoded streams corresponding to a plurality of picture contents from a server in a cloud. A client-side device receives the plurality of encoded streams, decodes the streams, executes synthesis processing, and generates a multi-picture reproduction image. For example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-064818 discloses a multi-picture reproduction image in which a plurality of elementary streams (ES) are received and wide display regions are allocated to the ES having the higher priorities on the basis of the display priorities.